In Sequence
by Val Mora
Summary: [The Great Escape] Danny's denial doesn't hurt just himself. [postwar, DannyWillie slash, DannyxOFC, OFCxOFC]
1. Chapter 1

**Title:** In Sequence (1/2)  
**Rating:** PG-13  
**Fandom:** The Great Escape, the movie  
**Pairing:** Danny/Willie (angstiful); Danny/OFC  
**Disclaimer:** Do I own the rights to film footage showing John Leyton shoving Charles Bronson up against a wall? No? Still MGM/UA's, then.  
**Summary:** Danny's denial doesn't hurt just himself.  
**Note:** Spot the reference to a movie I don't like. It may be a bit difficult to catch, since the nicknames or spellings are different, but it's there.  
Michael is Michael Louis because I liked the ring of 'Michael Velinski' and because Sedgwick's first name was Louis. Sedgwick was the Australian with the steamer trunk.  
On a tangent, Louis IX, who would have been Michael's patron saint in the Polish naming tradition, is patron of troubled marriages.

Willie has a sister. It sounds like something out of a crude joke – _Can't have your best friend? Has he got a sister?_ – but it is the truth. Elisabeth, she is called, and only Elisabeth. Even Willie is not allowed to call her Beth. 

Danny would not have called her Beth, anyway.

She looks just like her brother, only a girl – blonde hair with a slight wave to it, past the bottoms of her shoulder blades, and with those clear blue eyes. She is not _beautiful_, but perhaps he could learn to love her.

It takes her a year of courtship to decide that she does wish to say she loves him, and Danny is more grateful for this than he can express. It keeps him from seeing the lingering shadows beneath Willie's eyes, the ones that stare out at him with recriminations of _You promised_ and _What did I do_, questions to which Danny has no answer and cannot find any that could not be countered by a whisper of _I don't care what people will think_.

After another year and a half, those shadows fade, and Willie gives Danny his blessing for the engagement, and Danny pretends not to notice that Willie's hand on his shoulder rests there a touch too long and his smile is as hollow as broken glass.

Danny finds, that evening, that he feels guilty when he touches Elisabeth now. Before, he only felt guilty when he looked at Willie.

* * *

Elisabeth is in labor for eleven hours.

Danny spends the first three pacing, back and forth in the waiting room, the very picture of a nervous first-time father. The next three, he sits in a chair beside Willie, trying to stay calm, waiting, waiting, always. The tension is like waiting for Hilts to open the tunnel, and the only reason he is not afraid is because of the light.

Hours seven through nine, he paces again, taking walks around the hospital, drinking four cups of coffee, carrying on low, muted conversations with Willie.

"You are not worried?"

"No," Willie says, and he's wearing a smile, like he finds Danny's anxiety amusing.

"Why?"

"She's too bloody-minded to let labour hurt her."

Danny laughs out of surprise and goes back to his pacing.

The tail end of hour nine, he sits next to Willie again, but this time, he falls asleep, head on Willie's shoulder. Willie lets him; Danny's been up since two in the morning, when Elisabeth woke him because her contractions were becoming painful.

Fifteen minutes into hour twelve, the nurse comes to deliver the news, and Willie shakes Danny awake, hands warm on his shoulders. It takes long enough that by the time Danny is in the hospital room, Elisabeth has fallen asleep with the baby in her arms.

Danny moves to take the baby himself, but the nurse beats him to it, claiming 'Measurements – have to, love.' He lets her, but not before asking, "Boy or girl?"

"Boy," she says, smiling at him like she knows exactly how he feels, and then leaves.

He sits down by Elisabeth's bed and waits for her to wake up, wondering what Willie is doing outside.

* * *

By the time Michael is two, it is patently obvious which of his parents he is more like. He may have his mother's blond hair with its faint wave and his mother's blue eyes, but the dangerous intensity with which he regards the world is all his father's.

Danny is not quite sure what to make of being a parent, other than that he is one. Sometimes he thinks, when he sees the way Willie cares about Michael, that he should not have been.

But he is not the one who had a sister, and Willie could not have learned Polish, anyway. Danny tried to teach him, in the stalag, and it was a comical disaster, if a dangerous one.

* * *

If Danny were anyone else, he probably would have called Maggie an accident. As it is, she's just – the surprise. He and Elisabeth didn't mean to have another child. After all, a three-year-old boy was enough of a challenge, even with Willie, who didn't live too far away and was always willing to help.

It didn't happen like that. Most of the time, Danny is still glad of it, except when Maggie tries to chew on the carpet.

* * *

Michael is eight and forgetful and runs around with his shoes untied, tripping over them and tumbling into everything from the ground to the dog next door.

He laughs, which is more than can be said for either of the men whom he resembles, and has a code of honor that drives him even at his young age.

He stands up for his sister to his friends, which is so unusual that it is almost inhuman.

Maggie Velinski is five and independent and disobedient. She steals cookies and plays in the mud and has a temper like nobody else's, especially when anyone except her mother calls her Margaret.

She has a button nose that wrinkles when she's confused, like a puppy, and unruly dark hair, and bright blue eyes like her mother. She is, as her mother says, an adorable handful.

Her favorite person in the world, as she would say, is her Uncle Willie, who listens to her always, and never tells on her, even about the time she was playing with her friend Jamie's dog and it got loose and tore up the entire flower garden.

Her dad knew whose fault it was anyway, though.

Oh, well.

* * *

Michael is fifteen and Maggie twelve when Elisabeth gets sick. At first, it's only a cough, a quiet little sound repeated once every so often.

At the end, it's still a cough. It just happens to bring up blood and flesh.

She dies a week before Michael's eighteenth birthday after six months of morphine, and Danny finds Maggie sitting on the side of the bathtub, knuckles clenched tight around the rim and her long, dark hair spilled into her face.

He kneels in front of her on the tile floor and wishes he could say something, but there are no words of encouragement he can offer. Willie is better at such things and always will be.

They stare at each other for a bit before Maggie falls off her perch and into his embrace and breaks down in tears. He pats her back awkwardly and wonders how the baby he remembers turned into this strange young woman who is crying on his shoulder.

* * *

Maggie sits next to him one night when she is seventeen and says, "There's something I need to tell you."

He looks up, waiting for her to speak.

"I – met someone. A little while ago. And. Er."

"Have he and I been introduced?" Danny asks, withholding judgement on whether or not it is a good thing that his daughter waited so long to tell him.

She looks down and mumbles, almost incoherently, "Not 'he.'"

Danny, to keep his hands from clenching in ashamed, desperate shock, says, "I did not hear. What did you say?"

This time, when she says, "No, you haven't met," her voice is clear.

After she leaves the room, he buries his head in his hands, thinking of family traits and of Willie, and cannot help but feel guilty. Cannot help but feel as though the place where he once wore his wedding ring has been seared by Elisabeth's shame.

* * *


	2. optional Chapter 2

**Title:** In Sequence (2/2)  
**Rating:** PG-13  
**Fandom:** The Great Escape, the movie  
**Pairing:** Danny/Willie (angstiful); Danny/OFC  
**Disclaimer:** Do I own the rights to film footage showing John Leyton shoving Charles Bronson up against a wall? No? Still MGM/UA's, then.  
**Summary:** Danny's denial doesn't hurt just himself.  
**Notes: **As a coincidence, Julianne's last name, Strafer, happens to be an alteration of a term for a kind of aerial attack (strafe), which comes from the German _strafen_, 'to punish.' I didn't intend it, but…  
Also, if the idea of a person 'vibrating' disturbs you, take it up with Neil Gaiman.

* * *

Willie, as is probably appropriate, treats Maggie no differently and adores Julianne, who prefers to be known by her family name, Strafer. 

Danny does not know what to think of the young woman who has been welcomed into his daughter's life. He likes that she makes Maggie happy, appreciates her sense of humour and the warmth of her regard for him, but he does not know if he likes _her_.

He thinks it is more that he does not appreciate what she represents, which is his own shortcomings.

* * *

It is one night, when Maggie has Julianne over for dinner and invites Willie as a distraction, that things go wrong.

Danny says very little because he has nothing to say, but Maggie misconstrues it as dislike, hissing to him afterwards, "I know that you don't like Strafer, but you don't have to be so obvious about it!"

"I do not hate her," he states, somewhat confused, but she does not believe him, if her snarl of, "Pull the other one – it's got bells on," is any indication.

She and Strafer secret themselves on a couch in a room with no doors, to preserve some propriety, and leave Danny and Willie to stare at each other in silence in the kitchen.

After a bit, Willie says neutrally, "I think she feels as though you don't accept her the way she is." It isn't a non sequitur.

Danny does not stand, but it is a difficult thing to resist. "I accept her. I only think her life will not be as easy."

After he finishes those words, he can almost see Willie's skin flush with anger twenty years in the making. "I've heard that before," Willie says, voice abstract. "Where have I heard that before, Danny?" His hands clench on top of the table, and the flush of fury beneath his skin makes Danny's reply of, "Long ago" choked.

"Not as long ago as I think you want it to be," Willie says, and when his gaze meets Danny's, his expression is too still, revealing nothing of his thoughts except a burning anger.

Danny looks away. "I do not remember how long ago," he says calmly, breathing deeply as though he is buried again and trying to calm the fear. He runs fingers along the edge of the table, lines etching into the pads of his fingers from the pressure.

"Maybe I didn't hear it, then," Willie says, as much of an apology as Danny is likely to ever get on the subject, and he stands. "I'm off," he says calmly.

Danny lets him go and does not bother to chase Strafer out, though he does ask that she sleep in Michael's old room.

* * *

Michael visits and says little, but it is patently obvious that he thinks nothing of Strafer. He neither likes nor dislikes her, and Strafer seems to take it better than Maggie does.

Perhaps it is because Strafer's own family does not know and would not approve if they did.

Michael spends some time with Willie and repeats none of what they speak beyond a sketchy explanation of, "Talking about her a little," meaning Elisabeth. Danny does not envy them the time. He finished mourning Elisabeth some time ago, and now only remembers her with a gentle sort of fondness.

* * *

Danny and Willie set one evening a year aside to remember the war before they put it behind them again for another twelve months. It is not official. They only sit across a table from one another and say nothing, closing their mouths around the words they might say because remembering is too painful and it is impossible to do otherwise.

This year, Willie does not sit, and instead asks, possibly but not likely rhetorically, "Why are we doing this?" His eyes are impossibly blue, fixed on the end of the cigarette that he's lighting.

"Maybe because we do not think to do anything else," Danny says, and Willie turns to look at him as he adds, "We don't think of forgetting."

The expression on Willie's face makes him wish Maggie were there to distract him. He has not been so attuned to Willie's moods since Elisabeth, so finely tied to another that he vibrates with the other's emotions.

He wonders if he would need to say anything at all to express himself, had he chosen the other way, and stifles it, but he can see the knowledge of the thought in the slope of Willie's back as he leans against the counter.

"It could've been different," Willie says quietly. "But perhaps, like you seem to think, it's better this way."

Danny does not refute the words, and Willie stands to walk out the door – walk out the door and close another one behind himself, from behind which Danny will never be able to speak to him like this again.

"I think," Danny says, before Willie can quite reach the door, "that as things are, they are not better, but could be best. If you wanted to."

Willie's response is slow enough to make Danny wonder at his thoughts and to leave him time to notice the quiet, half-secretive smile on Willie's face.

"I think," Willie says, echoing him, "that I want to."

* * *


End file.
